The present invention relates to medical pumps tailored for implementation of a specific therapy.
Medical pumps, such as syringe pumps or peristaltic infusion pumps, are known for computer-controlled delivery of medication or contrast agents (henceforth medicaments) to patients over a period of time. Typically the medicament is delivered in a syringe (for a syringe pump) or a flexible bag (for a peristaltic infusion pump, or ambulatory pump) that may be connected to an IV line and attached to a needle inserted into the patient. When a nurse or other healthcare professional ministering to the patient receives the medicament, the healthcare professional reviews the medicament description for correctness and enters the desired dose and rate into the pump. Other pump parameters such as alarm limits and the like may also be programmed at this time. The syringe or IV line must then be mechanically connected to the pump mechanism, the needle introduced into the patient, and the mechanism activated to begin pumping.
Advances in medical equipment design have greatly simplified the operation of such pumps permitting them to be used in a wide variety of environments and by different operators including not only trained healthcare professionals in a hospital environment but also in a home care setting by a visiting nurse or even by the patients themselves. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/488,841 filed Jun. 5, 2012, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/190,312 filed Feb. 26, 2014, assigned to the assignee of the present application and hereby incorporated by reference, describe systems that providing features that assist patients in operating pumps with minimal supervision including allowing the pump to be preprogrammed by a pharmacist and/or skilled healthcare professional and providing certain on-site checks, for example, of proper medicament.
The treatment of some medical conditions can require the administration of multiple drugs in a particular sequence according to a complex schedule that varies over time. For example, in the treatment of Primary Immunodeficiency (PI), a primary medicament of therapeutic immune globulin containing IgG antibodies must be administered only after a preliminary medicament of Recombinant Human Hyaluronidase is injected. This latter preliminary drug modifies dermal tissue to better disburse the antibodies of the primary drug.
Each treatment session requires the administration of both drugs in the particular order and the entire treatment requires adhering to a schedule with changing dosages over time. Ideally, these treatments are self-administered by the patient, but the complexity of the treatment process can be difficult for some patients to properly manage.